


Waving, Not Drowning

by cryogenia



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Bad Decisions, Breathplay, Bulges and Nooks, Cronus thinks he's finally found his match, Gillplay, M/M, Troll Gills, but for once he really didn't deserve this, it doesn't exactly go as he was hoping, noncon, p much the best way to describe Cronus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 07:40:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7426030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryogenia/pseuds/cryogenia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cronus finally gets what he thinks he wants. It doesn't turn out well, or anything like he was expecting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waving, Not Drowning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oncewewerezombies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncewewerezombies/gifts).



> Happy Drone Season! Hope this is anything in line with what you were looking for. 
> 
> Readers, please do heed the tags.

The city layout warps from time to time, depending on what other bubbles it’s slammed into recently, but the center is always the same. The alley outside the boss’s hivestem always reeks like a dying tidepool, the ammonia of human piss and vegetative rot radiating equally from the dumpster. The air is always impressively stale. The heat is always overwhelmingly brutal. Cronus wipes his face on his already sticky leather jacket and thumps at his stupid sides. His sweat is so thick his spiracle are wheezing, sucking on air cause they think there’s water to breathe.

He boosts the door to the rear stairs and heads on up to the boss’s pad. The locks are unbelievably shitty here, because the boss doesn’t believe in trusting locks. The boss’s block is at the very top of the hivestem (in deference to his status), but he makes everyone break in the rear entrance. He doesn’t believe in elevators either.

Cronus pauses in front of the boss’s door to pop a fresh cancer stick. Maybe two, for when the first one wilts. It’s not that he cares about appearances or anything, but the boss is the coolest cat without even trying. In fact, he actively tries _not_ to. Cronus will walk in and Bro will be sprawled there eating chips out of a sparkly pony bowl, wearing nothing a pair of long coral shorts because he’s so cool he transcended cool entirely.

He forces the even shittier lock to the boss’s front door and peers inside. A game grub is paused on the big screen in the corner, but there’s no other sign of movement. Cronus picks his way toward the respiteblock, stepping around deadly Legos and squishy comfortobjects alike. The boss’s entire hive is filled with pile material (right out in the open!) because he gives zero fucks. Cronus aspires to give so few fucks.

“Boss?”

Nothing. The air is getting thicker, like it’s crawling into his pores. Cronus smooths a prickling fin back to his face. The boss isn’t always what you call ‘visible’. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There’s so much debri-- _cool stuff_ that it takes a few minutes to find the note, buried beneath a Doritos bag and an off-white, wrinkled singlet. Recently worn. The boss’s cologne is overpowering, mixed with his deep musk. He has it halfway to his nose before he even realizes what he’s doing.

_Meet me at the pool. Bring ice._

Ice. Yes. Ice is good. Ice would be very good right about now. He drops the singlet as if burned and stumbles to the nutrition block, fanning himself with the front of his own shirt. Cronus squeezes past the crate of cherry bombs and gives the figurine in the toaster a thumbs up. Its webcam whirrs a greeting back.

Cronus takes one of the short swords from the oven and uses the handle to open the freezer. The upper ice tray is filled with broken glass (of course) but there’s half a bag of fresh ice from the Kum and Go. Cronus leans into the frigid compartment and chirrs with pleasure. It’s a sick, alien noise but he can’t help it. It feels so, so good.

He hugs the bag of ice close and reluctantly pushes the freezer shut. There’s only one last flight of stairs - maintenance access to the roof - but for some reason, they feel like the longest. Maybe it’s the sun. The radiation isn’t powerful enough to be lethal, but it’s so. fucking. bright. Cronus hoists the ice up next to his face and tries to use the bag for shadow. It barely helps at all. The contrasting temperatures makes his pan spin, and the bag is dripping water all over his shoulder. It’s going to ruin his jacket.

Cronus steps onto the roof, and the world is on _fire_.

Pavement expands here on out to infinity. No edges, no other rooftops, just _bright_. The boss is sitting in a white plastic lawnring chair missing one of its back legs, kicking back with one foot on his four-wheel device. The ‘pool’ is a shallow, inflatable basin for wigglers. It’s shaped like an Earth dragon (dinosaur?) with a bulbous smile and paws and a short flat tail. The water is stored in the scoop of its belly.  

The water is _boiling_.

Behind the boss, a massive firey cyclone spins and spins and spins. It swallows everything. The crows are crying, the crows are screaming and he can’t - he can’t -

“Here.”

Bro moves so suddenly he doesn’t move at all. His hands are simply _there_ on Cronus’s face, radiating calm. Something hooks behind Cronus’s face fins and the world winks down to a survivable brightness. The sky is not on fire. There’s ice on his shoulder. He can breathe.

Cronus warbles and touches his ganderbu-- _eyes_ in confusion. They’re the wrong shape, all triangular and pointy.

“Shades,” he says thickly. Like a pan-fried wiggler. “...you gavwe me your shades?”

Bro turns away, already pulling on a second pair. Cronus catches a glimpse of white that might be his eyes. He’s never seen them.

“Always be prepared,” the boss says, holding up two fingers. There’s a ghost of a grin on his broad lips.

Bro saunters away at more sedate speed, swinging his hips back and forth with a rhythm that dares to be matched. Cronus watches numbly, lost somewhere in the whiplash from his moment of panic. He needs to get his shit together. The light is still overwhelming, but it’s bearable. It is. Humans are diurnal creatures and he loves the daystar. Everyone does. The boss is wearing jeans and a shirt, for fuck’s sake.

The boss is wearing _tight_ jeans and a _tight_ shirt. Somehow, that helps ground him as much as anything.

Bro grunts and points at the bag of ice, forgotten in Cronus’s hand.

“Vwhere do you vwant it?”

Bro circles back toward the pool but doesn’t offer anything out loud. Bro doesn’t like a lot of words outside of the booth. Gotta build the fire until the crowd is stoked. Have to wait for the right time to drop the truth bomb. Cronus doesn’t always get what he _means_ , but he’s happy to hear that deep voice say things.

Bro extends a hand and beckons impatiently. He has one of his wakizashi out, a shattered one with half a blade.

“Catch!” Cronus yells. He swings the bag and tosses it underhand in Bro’s general direction. Bro does a sweet backflip and slices it open in midair, spilling it flawlessly into the bucket.

The _bucket_.

It’s on the pavement next to Bro’s chair, a big, intimidating size. It’s pure white, five Texas gallons. (Everything in Texas comes in five gallons. Lemonade, sweet tea, steaks.) He can’t even see into it from this angle, it’s so deep.

Cronus pinches his hip, hard. Humans don’t use buckets. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just the heat making him weak at the knees.

Bro gestures with the butt of his sword to a second chair. Cronus stumbles for it on auto pilot. (Was it always there?  Who knows, in the dream bubbles. The bucket must have always-been too.) This chair even has all four legs, because Bro’s got his back like that.

He’s about to take a load off when he notices something flicker. Cronus pulls up short and tries not to flare his fins. The C-man is perched casually on the chair’s arm in his rockin’ purple gown. His glass eyes gleam painfully in the scorching sun.

Cronus gives the puppet a nervous fist bump and glances over at Bro. The boss has his arm down _in_ the bucket which -- nope. Sitting down. He leans wide and gives Lil Cal some room as he slides into the chair. The hot plastic feels like it molds to his back, sucking out his will to do much of anything.

Bro glances his way. He doesn’t say anything but there is a sudden flash and he goes from in the bucket to flicking one hand skyward. Something metal arcs toward Cronus’s head and he flails to make the catch. Refreshment cylind--can. It’s a silver can that says ‘Asahi’.

Bro dips his hat and raises his own beer. He cracks it open with one hand. The butt of his broken sword hangs proudly in the other one, like the sceptre of a king.

Which is stupid, humans don’t have a king. Except _The_ King, who presides over Las Vegas. In America everyone is free and they fight the red windmill people for truth and rock ‘n roll and the right to wear sweet shades.

Bro spreads his legs wide and kicks back with a long chug. Cronus sneaks a look and subtly mirrors him.

There’s an odd streak on the rim of his beer for some reason. On the arm of his _chair_ too. Cronus looks at his hand, at the spots of grey wearing through and his upper voicebox sticks in horror. His human makeup is wearing off. Even though he sealed it. It’s this goddamn heat, and --

Oh god. Lil Cal. His knuckles are a lil smudged. Cronus sinks down in his chair. He has no idea what the boss is going to do.

“Shit, I uh...gavwe your puppet a new paint job,” Cronus says nervously.

Thankfully, Bro shrugs.

“I don’t give a fuck,” he says. “C-man’s business.”

He points an accusatory finger at the can forgotten in Cronus’s lap.

“I do care if you drink beer, so do that.” His voice is such a deep, commanding growl. It curls into Cronus’s skin, makes his fins want to flex.

(Keep them down keep them down keep them down. Humans don’t have fucking threat displays. Flirt like a fucking _mammal_.)

Cronus looks down at the refreshment cylin-- _can_ in his hands. Beer is...not his first choice, admittedly. It tastes like sour kelp and sweaty clothes someone fermented in a gym bag. He’s not about to back down though. He has taken every challenge Bro has given him and eaten it for breakfast; he can stand a little sour swill for lunch. He cracks the top proudly and immediately takes a fistful of foam as the can expresses its displeasure at being thrown through the air earlier.

Bro chuckles while Cronus curses, low and full of promise. He kills his beer off and crushes the can against his forehead. Cronus gets distracted fromthe soggy mess by the sight of Bro dipping into the bucket again. He pounds his second one back and finishes in three long breathless pulls, like he’s a real sea dweller. Sweat trickles down the length of his muscular throat, pools in the hollow right where he’s most vulnerable. Cronus looks away.

“So vwhat’s the rumble for today, boss?” Cronus asks.

“Bro.”

“Bro.” Cronus licks his lips. “I brought my four-string.”

The card is in the casual first third of his sylladex. Not very the first slot, on account of he doesn’t want to look desperate.

“I been vworking on some newv licks,” he says. Bro says he’s got a good ear for hooks. If he keeps practicing, he might hit something cherry enough Bro will sample it for a hot mix. Bro’s got a tape recorder with him at all times.

Bro grunts and reaches for a third Asahi.

“Nah. Hot as balls,” he pronounces, solemn as death.

They continue drinking. Cronus spins his own sticky beer absently between his palms, taking a sip as often as he can stand it. He wonders if it will be ‘training’ today. Which -- it’s not that he can’t appreciate a little mixer, all right?  Bro is a master of the throwdown and he moves like no one you’ve ever seen. Literally. Humans can step so fast they vanish. It’s just getting kind of predictable that he’ll get the Crosshairs out, get a target lined up, and somehow weird puppets are ass-up in his scope. That’s all.

He probably can’t shoot straight today anyway. His shades are starting to fog up around the rim. Cronus tugs them away from his cheeks and brushes at the built-up moisture. Paint feels like it’s dripping from his pores.

“You look hot,” Bro drawls.

At least the sun’s good for one thing.

“Thanks for noticing,” Cronus purrs. He stops it as soon as he can give his thoracic voicebox a subtle thump. Bro seems amused though.

“Should take that shit off,” Bro tells him, gesturing at his outfit. Which is. Holy shit.

“Oh yeah?” Cronus plays with the collar of his shirt, trailing his claws back and forth around his vulnerable neck. He pointedly does not look at the bucket like a six-sweep old wiggler.

He looks at the bucket.

Condensation glistens on the outside of the plastic, looking less like water and more like...other liquids. Cronus watches in mute fascination as a gleaming bead rolls down the side. He shakes himself and sets his beer on the ground. The jacket’s definitely going to go. He’s not sure how the fuck he survived so long already (beyond aesthetic).

He peels it off one arm at a time, wrinkling his nose at the smell of sweaty hoofbeast leather. The lining is completely soaked and kind of foul to the touch. He hurls the jacket to the ground, embarrassed. His slime ducts must be working doubletime to keep him cool, but the price is that his gorgeous Maryam Original is turning purple from the inside out. Jegus, that looks disgusting. He feels disgusting.

Bro doesn’t look like he’s looking at something disgusting. He seems fascinated. The shades make it impossible to tell exactly what he’s looking at, of course, but it’s obvious from the angle it’s some part of Cronus’s body. The tip of his very pink tongue is teasing out between very swollen lips.

“Jesus. You’re a white t-shirt contest all by yourself.”

Cronus blinks and looks down at his white shirt. Formerly white shirt. It’s starting to dye faintly lilac with sweat, just like the ill-fated lining to his jacket.

“Stewving in my owvn juices, you mean,” he spits. Whatever. The self-deprecating thing is hot with chicks. Maybe it works on guys, too.

Maybe it extra works on guys. “Should get in the pool then,” Bro says. His voice is so even, but there’s something hungry in his tone. Cronus glances at the bucket again - and Bro’s biceps, shining in the unnatural light - and he _wants._

“Sure thing, boss.”

“Bro.”

“Vwhatevwer.”

He stands up carefully to avoid dethroning Lil Cal and peels his shirt off. The neck gets caught on his stupid fucking fins. Bro says nothing, just cracks another beer. His fourth?  Fifth?  His lips devour the rim in wet circles and Cronus completely loses count.

His jeans are a hopeless mess of sweat and now that very first hint of material dripping from his nook. It’s like extruding grubloaf from a vacuum pack getting them off. Everything wants to cling to his hips, his thighs, his calves. He ultimately has to kick the nasty things off with his boots in one lump.

And now...now he’s naked -- nearly naked -- in front of the first person who ever wanted him to be. Does he flash the guns?  Bend over?  He’s not even out yet, it all happened so fast. His tight cotton human briefs are wedged into his nook a little, tickling right where he ought to be presenting. He takes a deep breath and drops them to the ground. No big.

His legs have turned to jelly and he’s going to melt to the pavement. No big.

Bro is drawing a finger down the center of his own body, humming a little. The thin fabric catches and clings around his chest, cutting a perfect line between his human musclepheres. Rumblespheres. _Pecs_. Cronus catches his breath on a particularly ill-timed chirp. Is he supposed to make the overture?  Should Bro?  Bro has a video of himself in a dark room that slowly zooms in on his face as he rubs a comfortobject on his bulge. Cronus wonders if watching that counted, or if it only works for ‘irony’.

Bro sets his wakizashi down and rises in the same breath, the most elegant, regal swoop. His three-legged chair even pauses from falling down until the boss is ready to be done with it. Cronus takes the deepest breath of his life and tries to force his diaphragm to stop jumping. His dumb thoracic voicebox keeps wanting to purr and attempting to shut it off just results in annoying seabeast clicks. He is human, he is _human_ , fuck this fucking body.

(Oh please, fuck this body.)

“You gonna get in or you gonna flash the world?” Bro asks, amused.

Cronus flushes deep violet all the way down his chest. He’s so fucking dizzy. He wants to close the distance and _touch_ , beg the boss to give him a peek of his body too. Maybe just casually hump Bro’s leg. Bro is standing there like a monolith though, immovable and impassive. Cronus can’t wait to see where this is going.

He steps over the dinosaur’s vapid smile and into its colorful body. The pillowy sides billow and squelch beneath his weight. He makes a face at the temperature. The water is human-blood warm, almost as bad as the humidity outside. It’s like settling into a warm ‘coon. When he sits, it feels more like sopor than sea.

“Hot as balls,” he confirms, grinning up at Bro.

“Oh yeah?”

There is a dark flash and the bucket is being inverted in his _face_.

Hundreds of tiny fangs jab at his skin and Cronus shrieks at the skittering bites. _Ice_ , all the ice and frigid, melted water is cascading down his front and the last few cans of beer bounce off his chest. Everything flashes cold so fast the air sucks right out of his land-lungs and he glubs through his spiracles, dumbfounded, scarcely able to breathe.

“Vwhat the fuck vwas that for!?” he screeches when his lungs have finally kicked in again. He claws at Bro’s shoulder in pure fury.

Bro translates six inches to the left and catches his wrist in a vise-like grip.

“Careful,” he drawls. “Don’t wanna pop Mr. Noodles.”

“Fuck Mr. Noodles!” Cronus’s entire body is trembling from horn to toe, from rage or cold or sheer shock. Cronus can’t even sort it out. “Vwhy the fuck vwould you do that?”

Bro shrugs.

“You were hot.”

“Yeah, vwell that’s fucking freezing!”

Cronus hisses in Bro’s face. He doesn’t even care that he sounds like a three day old wiggler. It’s too much. His thoracic gill slits are wide open and trembling. There might even be fucking ice in them. He flails with his free hand to claw at the little bastards but they’re everywhere. Behind him. He can’t see-

The world dissolves into afterimages again and Bro effectively vanishes, moving so fast . What feels like a thousand fronds brush over Cronus’s chest and the searing freeze suddenly blossoms into heat. So much heat. Cronus cries out as barely visible hands brush over his his chest, his thighs, his face. They smooth away the residual bite and clean the ice off him into the water. It’s starting to cool to a reasonable temperature, hot and cold currents mixing over his thighs.

He has never felt so pitch before in his life.

The torrent subsides and resolves into a singular Bro again, kneeling next to the pool. A thick arm slips behind Cronus’s shoulders and leans him back. It feels like cabled steel. Cronus disguises another chirp into a cough as a square palm covers over his mouth. Bro’s fingerless gloves taste like hoofbeast leather and sweat. Cronus laps at it weakly, still shivering. Chunks of ice are still bobbing all around him, bumping into his sides and making him squirm.

Bro forces him down until he’s flat on his back, floating in the water with only his face uncovered. When the water closes over his cheek-fins his gill flaps spread instinctively, drawing water through the spiracles and pumping it as hard as they can through his puny gills. Bro lets go of his mouth to trail a curious finger over one of his fins. The middle spines are so sensitive and Cronus can’t help it, he preens.

  
A second finger joins the first and strokes the webbing between two spines. Cronus spreads them wider, offering enticement rather than challenge. The way Bro’s touching him right now doesn’t feel pitch. It’s slow and gentle and makes him want strange things. The backs of his shoulders tingle like they mean to flex wings he doesn’t have and he can’t help chittering down deep in his chest.

Bro chuckles back, deep and velvet.

“You sound like a fuckin’ dolphin,” he says.

Is that a good thing?  It sounds like a good thing. Cronus lifts his head to shake the water from his glasses and - oh. He watches, fascinated, as Bro bites at his own wrist to pull off his wet gloves, one at a time. With his _teeth_. He tosses them somewhere over his shoulder and plunges them in again, bare, to tickle over Cronus’s ribs.

His fingers catch Cronus right between the gill arches.

Cronus chokes on a mouthful of plasticky water and twists, then freezes when he feels the pinch increase. The boss’s bare fingers are hooked just beneath the cartinologous ridges that separate each gill flap, holding him fast. His very stillness seems to make the wind itself hush. Nothing seems to breathe but Cronus, doing his damndest not to hyperventilate.  

Slowly, like peeling the cocoon from a grub, Bro dips the tips of his fingers deeper into the slits. Cronus tries not to scream as blunt nails nudge into the delicate, spongy interior. His gillfronds are multiflorus in the water and _vulnerable_ , like endlessly folded pan tissue laid bare. No one - no one does this. They’re touching organs, what kind of trust --

He thinks of Bro’s blunt, unprotected bulge and cries out.

‘Are vwe - are we vwacillating?” he whimpers.

“We’re fucking,” Bro tells him bluntly. “Thought you’d pick up on that.”

His right hand, the dominant one, dislodges from Cronus’s gills and plants itself hard on his collarplate. His upper half sinks deeper and Cronus has to flare his fins so his shades won’t float off.

“You ain’t thought I didn’t see how you was looking at me?” Bro asks. “I know when someone wants a piece of this action.”

 _Right back at you,_ Cronus thinks, but the challenge has no merit. He can’t quite get the water out of his mouth to voice it.

The hand swoops lower and rakes circles over Cronus’s belly. Down between his legs. Bro lets up thankfully enough for Cronus to see as he cups a hands over Cronus’s slit. The water is already starting to tint purple with tinges of dissolving slime. Bro hums to himself and presses a finger in, forcing the lips to part around his burning hot feeler stub.

“Oh fuck,” Cronus sputters. Edging on pitch again, so fast and hard and demanding. That’s fine, pitch. He can work with pitch. He squirms and angles his hips down, trying desperately to ride the weird probing sensation. His own bulge is starting to unfurl over Bro’s knuckles, shocked by the powerful, unrelenting intrusion. No one has ever touched him like this before. No one has ever cared. The heat of Bro’s skin, of his fingers, is incredible.

“It’s like fuckin’ La Blue Girl up in here,” Bro says, admiring. God, Cronus hopes that’s admiring. Bro’s still got his other hand teasing at a gill flap, absently playing with a ridge of fronds. It still feels deeply and impossibly strange. Like when medicoddlers knead your middle trying to check your filterglobes. Your body is just built to say enough is e-fucking-nough. But that look on Bro’s face -- so satisfied, so focused. Cronus never wants him to stop looking at him like that.

Bro spreads all five fingers and rakes them through Cronus’s bulge. The thin tentacles pulse and cling desperately to his softness. Bro squeezes back and _pulls_ and Cronus’s whole body lights up like fireworks.

Cronus glubs. Honest to god _glubs_ water instead of air and he doesn’t give a fuck. Bro’s fingers are playing with his tentacles like sugar floss and the pleasure is curling right down to his toes. Cronus coughs and clicks and twists and he is so turned on he can’t see straight. He _can’t_ see. His shades are halfway off his face and the whole world above is red light.

Suddenly, Bro disentangles himself altogether. Not flash-step fast, but it might as well be. Cronus’s nook is still rippling with pleasure and he cries out with the loss. His voice is too high right now, too squeaky. Humans don’t sing in the water, fucking moron. They aren’t built to make sounds that carry.

Cronus sits up and adjusts his shades, dizzy. Bro is pulling his t-shirt off with one hand. Somehow it doesn’t dislodge either his hat or his shades. He kicks off his sandals too and tosses all but the shades over to the C-man. When he undoes his jeans, Cronus can see his abs ripples.

The boss’s bulge is already poking through the flap of his thin, sweat-soaked underwear. His boxers have a strange pink-bowed purrbeast patterned over the crotch. Its mouthless face seems to laugh at Cronus’s awe. Cronus reaches up to touch the glistening bulge tip. He barely gets the sense of something slick and bulbous before Bro hisses and angles his hips away.

“Fuckin’ cold,” Bro says. “Gimme a sec.” Cronus plants his palms oh-so-casually on Mr. Noodles’ rubbery sides. The dry part of the plastic is so hot it feels like it’s molding to him.

Bro gets rid of his seashell necklace and his boxers and then turns back, smiling faintly. His bulge is -- it’s right there, and _huge._ Like three of Cronus’s tentacles woven together. It bobs against his globes as he steps into the pool, so fat it hangs down under its own gravity. The tip has a thin slick oozing thick milk.

“You like that?” Bro smirks. Before Cronus can answer, he seizes one of Cronus’s horns and hauls his face directly to it.

“Lick,” Bro commands, dark and deep.

Cronus growls in annoyance but he doesn’t quite have the leverage to pull away. Bro’s holding him just close enough he could just barely catch the tip with his tongue; Bro is in absolutely no danger of teeth.

“No,” he huffs, just to be snotty. Just because he’s cool with pitch doesn’t mean he’s into flipping every five minutes. He kind of wants Bro to play with his bulge again, maybe go back to petting his fins.

“Suck me first,” Cronus dares.

Bro’s expression goes flat and still as stagnant water.

“I asked first,” he says.

Bro lets go of his horn and yanks Cronus’s head back by his hair, smears his bulge tip over Cronus’s lips.

“Owv fuck!” Cronus sputters, flailing at both the pain and the flavor. The thick liquid doesn’t taste like milk at all. It’s like bitterweed and acid and he can’t get the aftertaste off of his _tongue_. Before he can take a breath to yell again, Bro flashes forward and there he is, on his knees, mashing his face to Cronus’s. He kisses so him so hard their goddamn fangs click.

Bro devours Cronus’s lips, his tongue, the line of his jaw in rapid measure. He reeks like Asahi but at least it washes out that horrible bulge taste. Cronus whimpers and paws at Bro’s chest, unsure if he should be scratching or petting. The vacillation is starting to make his head spin, red to black, back to red again.

“Please,” he gasps when Bro bites at his left fin. He’s not even sure which quadrant he’s pleading for. His bulges are writhing, disoriented, in the water. One of them brushes an errant sliver of ice and he shrieks.

Bro pushes him away and he collapses, panting. His scalp aches like a brand and he gladly sinks into the relatively cool water.

“That fucking hurt,” he snarls, showing every single one of his fangs.

Bro sits back on his haunches, going quiet. There’s the tiniest hint of a frown on his face.

“Don’t tell me you don’t like it rough?”

“I like it rough!” Cronus says quickly. The last thing he wants is for Bro to think he’s not cut out for spades. He is. Bonafide kisme-catch, that is absolutely him. “That was just -- you’re vacillating kinda fast there, boss. Maybe pick a quad and stick with it?”

When Bro moves this time, it’s not faster than the speed of light. Cronus can see every muscle ripple as he sloshes over, crawls on top of him.

“All right,” Bro drawls. “Let’s see if you can keep up.”

Cronus trills. Oh _hell_ yes.That is pitch, that is definitely pitch and -

Heavy hands slap down on his shoulders and Cronus plunges to the bottom of the pool. Water surges over his eyes, nose, and mouth and he is the worst fucking kind of a seadweller that he glubs for air _again_ . He aspirates fire straight down his windhole and spasms like a gutted fish and he still can’t fucking _breathe_.

Bro lets him up and he sputters to the surface, blue spots dancing in the space where his ganderbulbs should be. Strong arms circle him and he coughs and coughs and coughs.

Bro cups his face, stroking his drooping fins.

“So fucking hot,” Bro says softly.

Bro’s lips are everywhere like cleaningfish, licking away rivulets of water. Cronus growls and snaps, but he’s too sluggish to connect. He gets a hard shake for his trouble.

“Aw, don’t be like that.”

“Just gimme a minute!” Cronus yelps. Everything is so _bright_. His bulges are waving limply in the water.

Bro raises a sardonic eyebrow but he - he lets him go. Completely. He drops Cronus wholesale and lets him float. Like Cronus is just another piece of sea litter. A plastic bag tangled with foul things.

No. That’s not what he wanted, he just - he fucked up. He fucked up, that’s all. So Bro wants him surfside up, yeah?  He should be able to. He’s a seadweller. Plenty of mixed couples have sex on the beach. If Bro were Meenah -- if Meenah were his squeeze she’d want to be full on bottom-bumping. Which he can do. Really.

“You wanna keep going, or do you wanna be a little bitch?” Bro asks. His voice is terribly soft. Worse, pitying.

“Keep going,” Cronus says. His fingers are shaking.

Bro leans down again to capture his lips. It feels better this time. Feverish, but Cronus can feel it. He hesitantly catches Bro’s lower lip between his, only to feel him jerk back.

“Son of a bitch!” Bro snarls.

“Vwhat’d I do!?”

“Ice,” Bro grunts. He slaps the water near his bulge. “Right in the balls.”

Thank fuck it’s not him this time, at least. “They can’t go inside?” Cronus asks.

Bro shrugs. “Different kinda fetish. Not my scene.” He slips a hand beneath Cronus’s ass and squeezes. “I’m more about the plush rumps.”

“Oh,” Cronus says. Bro’s hand is brushing close to his nook again. It summons a glimmer of that earlier lightning, little coils zinging up his spine.

See, he can do this. He just needs to relax.

“You like that?” Bro breathes, swirling his fingers over two of Cronus’s tentacles. His huge bulge bobs maddeningly near the rest. Cronus shivers and cants his hips up so they can reach for it. Bro’s bulge is stiff as driftwood, even completely submerged, and doesn’t move at all when Cronus’s tentacles twine around it.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Bro growls. Cronus chirps back faintly. He slips a tentative arm over Bro’s shoulders.

Bro grabs him close and presses his bulge flush against his slit, holding it there with one hand. Cronus cries out and his own tentacles flex around and around, twisting on the alien knob like it’s a nookplug. (They fill you up so tight and just hold there right over your inner seed flap so you can’t release material. He’d found one in Mituna’s sock drawer once, right before _that_ night went sideways.)

Good riddance to mustard rubbish, anyway. His real kismesis is here, pushing him. His real kismesis, who wants him. He’s not a very good human, he’s a disaster of a troll even, but he’s got somebody who fuckin’ _appreciates_.

“Hold still,” Bro says.

Bro angles his bulge _in_ and it is so big and thick that it feels like a fist shoving him open. Cronus squeals and tries to twist away, but Bro gets an arm tight around his waist.

“You can do it,” Bro tells him. “Hell yeah. You like that?”

He doesn’t know. His nook keeps pulsing and it sends shocks of pleasure all the way to his horns but it also _hurts_. Kind of a lot. His own bulges are folded inside too, so desperate for stimulation they refuse to let go of Bro’s and he’s so full he can’t do anything but shiver.

“Yeah, you like that,” Bro tells him.

He barely has time to realize what’s happening before Bro pushes him under again.

This time his gill flaps open at least. He doesn’t choke like a pan-damaged wiggler. His spiracles pull hard and water flows like it’s supposed to and he makes it through the transition where it feels like he’s forgotten how to breathe. He’s not panicking. He’s just pailing.

He is pailing...right?

Bro is already as far in him as it feels like a lover could get and then he pulls _back._ Cronus’s tentacles follow after, twisting desperately against that soft heat, only to be yanked when Bro pushes inside Cronus’s nook again. He snaps his hips like someone set a firecracker at the base of his spine, ramming all the way in even faster than before. His blunt bulge is so big it scrapes his seedflap on the first try.

Cronus trembles and squeezes Bro’s shoulders. His nook clamps down tight, instinctively trying to direct an incoming wriggly to the right place, but Bro’s bulge is too rigid to follow the ripples. It pulls out instead, moving against the contractions, and Cronus’s nook aches with the burn. It’s a nightmare. It’s every one of his wet dreams. He feels so empty and it hurts so much and then Bro thrusts in ohyesrightthere and he just -

Blunt fingers stroke over his gill flaps and Cronus goes so still his belly trembles.

Bro knows those are his gills. He has to. Cronus twists and tries to nudge at Bro’s hand, but it only encourages him to prod the next flap down. Bro’s other arm is braced across his chest, holding him fast against the pool bottom.

There’s only an inch of water over his mouth, but it might as well be a full fathom.

Cronus clicks and thumps at Bro’s back, but it only seems to egg him on. His bulge scrapes up against Cronus’s internal shameglobes and sets his body tingling in an entirely new direction. Jegus, he can feel that in his _fins_ . He can also feel the fingers though, boring into his side like worms. Don’t think worms. _Nook_ worms maybe. Sex toys. This stiff bulge is every xenophile’s fantasy. It’s so powerful.

Bro rears back and lifts Cronus with him, still buried globes-deep inside his nook. Water sprays in cascading rainbows. Cronus sucks air like it’s his first after a coma and shakes and shakes and shakes.

“Yeah,” Bro growls directly into his neck. “Yeah you little bitch, come on.”

The angle is overwhelming. It’s like Bro’s bulge is hitting him everywhere at once. Cronus’s head lolls on his neck and he can’t think. He can’t move.

“Lay off the gi--”

He doesn’t even get the words out before Bro shoves him down. Everything from his nook down is aching. His globes are swollen to bursting and his bloodpusher is running hot and cold and Bro is still fingering his gills on the right side. Cronus squirms and elbows him and he gets a thrust so hard it all but forces his seedflap open. White hot feeling lances up in the insides of his thighs and he’s so close. He’s so close.

Something covers his _spiracles_ on the left and he can’t breathe. _He can’t breathe._

It’s the same as sucking water into his land-lungs but in reverse, his body misses a step and his mind tumbles without warning. All his gill flaps flare like they can work harder through sheer will but it doesn’t stop, it doesn’t stop the thing from smothering his side. It’s the pool _wall_ , he’s too close, and the plastic is stifling his skin. Each draw he takes pulls the obstruction closer and it’s starting to burn down deep in his body. Like he’s been running too long and his strut pods are turning acid and he just can’t catch his breath.

Cronus yanks on Bro’s shoulders desperately, trying to lift himself up to catch a breath, but he can’t quite get his face above the surface. Water spills into his mouth when he tries and he swallows huge mouthfuls. It tastes rancid, like a plastic bottle that’s been sitting out for a thousand sweeps.

Bro’s bulge is still moving in him, ramming into his sensitive seedflap and it’s like it’s a poker now. His bloodpusher is beating a klick a minute and everything is magnified, fear, arousal. He can’t even feel his legs, they’ve gone blazing white. Everything has gone white with the need to come and also breathe and he can’t say anything.

He digs into Bro’s back with his claws, in desperation, and Bro wrenches him sideways so hard his head spins. Something pulls away from his smothered side and he can feel water on his abused gills but it doesn’t stop the terror.

Red is running into the water like the sky that might still be on fire, and Bro’s hips dive deep and grind long, one, two, three. Purple spots dance where his eyes should be, and his nook clamps down and he is burning from the inside out.

Bro’s bulge is still inside him when he fishes Cronus an eternity later, props him up against his chest. Cronus’s spiracles and land-lungs wheeze together, too exhausted to determine which set of them should breathe. Both. Neither. He tries to speak but spits up water. His throat is still too raw to swallow.

Bro’s huge hand strokes down his left side, fingering his gill arches tenderly. Everything is too bright to see.

“Not too bad for a first time.” Bro pronounces, somewhere above him. “Oh hey. You lost these.”

Something hard and dripping nudges Cronus’s face. His shades, rescued from somewhere in the pool. Cronus clicks and whimpers, trying to pull away. He can see his own face staring back at him in the glasses’s reflection. He doesn’t want to be making that face.

He’s a good kismesis, really. He’s not a little bitch. And he’s _fine_.

He’s fine.

(He’s fine.)

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note:  
> 1) [This sample from 100% in the Bitch is the canonical voice for Bro Strider](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm9K6wYkVDQ) and nobody can tell me different.  
> 2) It's my permanent head canon that none of the Amporas are particularly good at Ocean. For theoretically proud and noble sea dwwellers, they sure do spend a lot of time on land.  
> 3) The human king myth Cronus references is basically the plot of Six-String Samurai. Cronus's cool humankin identity is compiled largely from shitty movies.  
> 4) Last note: Cronus calls Bro 'boss' vs chief since in his little fantasy world, Bro is the leader of their little gang. Their two person gang, which mysterious spends most of its time beating up on each other than rumbling with anyone else...
> 
> Follow me on Tumblr at [eye-of-orion](http://eye-of-orion.tumblr.com/) :)


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